Nevertheless, she met him the next morning walking slowly so near her house that their encounter might have been scarcely accidental on his part. She walked with him as far as the Conservatoire. In the light of the open street she thought he looked pale and hollow-cheeked; she wondered if it was from his enforced frugality, and was trying to conceive some elaborate plan of obliging him to accept her hospitality at least for a single meal, when he said:—
“I think you have brought me luck, Miss Maynard.”
Helen opened her eyes wonderingly.
“The two Russian connoisseurs who stared at us so rudely were pleased, however, to also stare at my work. They offered me a fabulous sum for one or two of my sketches. It didn't seem to me quite the square thing to old Favel the picture-dealer, whom I had forced to take a lot at one fifteenth the price, so I simply referred them to him.”
“No!” said Miss Helen indignantly; “you were not so foolish?”
Ostrander laughed.
“I'm afraid what you call my folly didn't avail, for they wanted what they saw in my portfolio.”
“Of course,” said Helen. “Why, that sketch of the housetop alone was worth a hundred times more than what you”—She stopped; she did not like to reveal what he got for his pictures, and added, “more than what any of those usurers would give.”
“I am glad you think so well of it, for I do not mean to sell it,” he said simply, yet with a significance that kept her silent.
She did not see him again for several days. The preparation for her examination left her no time, and her earnest concentration in her work fully preoccupied her thoughts. She was surprised, but not disturbed, on the day of the awards to see him among the audience of anxious parents and relations. Miss Helen Maynard did not get the first prize, nor yet the second; an accessit was her only award. She did not know until afterwards that this had long been a foregone conclusion of her teachers on account of some intrinsic defect in her voice. She did not know until long afterwards that the handsome painter's nervousness on that occasion had attracted even the sympathy of some of those who were near him. For she herself had been calm and collected. No one else knew how crushing was the blow which shattered her hopes and made her three years of labor and privation a useless struggle. Yet though no longer a pupil she could still teach; her master had found her a small patronage that saved her from destitution. That night she circled up quite cheerfully in her usual swallow flight to her nest under the eaves, and even twittered on the landing a little over the condolences of the concierge—who knew, mon Dieu! what a beast the director of the Conservatoire was and how he could be bribed; but when at last her brown head sank on her pillow she cried—just a little.